The Ego of Facebook

I was playing around with Facebook again tonight, trying to understand what all the hype is about. Apparently they just recently turned down a buy out offer from Yahoo! of over a billion (yes BILLION) dollars.

I came across founder Mark Zuckerberg's profile. A nice Steve Jobs video, some friend comments and general 'whats up' links basically amount to a cleaner version of MySpace.

While I appreciate people wanting to congregate online and share their words, photos, experiences, etc...I still don't get the generic social network world. I'm really into the web being 'resource' driven these days. Facebook is kinda boring, dull, simple, clean, basic. Is that the appeal? Then again, I don't quite understand the appeal of MySpace being wild, random, wild, crazy, annoying, voyeuristic...oh yeah, that.

Still, I've gotta give them some props for turning down a huge offer at this stage in their game. It could be the easy way out to sell your company at the height of popularity and figure out how to adapt to a new corporate culture which will want to 'monetize' everything in sight while still trying to retain the trust of your users. Nice job, Mark. Way to stay true to your morals.

But I've also gotts say, what struck me the most about my Facebook journey was that at the bottom of EVERY page of the site below the footer of links and above the copyright notice are the words "a Mark Zuckerberg production". What's up with that?!


Mark, there's no I in TEAM (although there is an M and an E)

How NOT to cold call

Office Phone Rings -- no Caller ID -- reluctantly, I pick up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi, how are you today?"

"I'm, ooook, how are you?"

"Ok, I guess...i think we've got a gas leak here."

"Wow, I'm sorry to hear that...how can I help you?"

"Well, I noticed that on your website you have contextual ads and I was wondering if you would be interested in running some of our ads?"

"Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, we're [company name] and we pay a referral fee for each ad clicked. It's absolutely free, and we split the money with you 50%"

"Hmmm, sounds interesting. How much can I make?"

"It varies, depending on the advertiser and how much traffic you get."

"Ok, well, can you email me some information to my email so I can pass it off to my sales person?" - I actually give her my email.

"Sure, will do"

"Ok, thanks, and good luck with that gas leak"

"Thanks"

--- 5 minutes later, I get an email ---

Subject: We Are Interested in Starting a Parntership with www.jambase.com

Hello Andrew,

I am trying to get in touch with you to discuss a new revenue stream option for your company. At [company name], we are constantly looking for new opportunities to expand our business and I would like to discuss with you a revenue partnership that will benefit both of our companies! Our Affiliate Program does not cost you a penny and will bring profit along with traffic to your website!! Below are a few of the many options we have to offer:

---

That's as far as I read before I hit delete.

If you're going to cold call, do it when the gas leak is fixed. Beyond me really wanting my business partners to have their priorities in order, it does no one any good if you're flighty and aloof during the call. I tried to give her a break on the phone, but the email was just too much.

-- 5 minutes later, the phone rang, strange caller id ---

"Hello?"

"Hi, I'm calling with xxx market research about your recent stay at a hotel."

oy...

the thing is, i actually took their phone survey.

Mmmm...trailers

Biff

Kayak.com

Since we're talking about Air travel, check out Kayak.com (old news, I know)

For those of you who've never seen it - it's a cool airline travel website which lets you do the normal searching and then 'filter' by a variety of criteria (airport, times, price) and it will refresh automatically (ajax baby!) on the spot.

The best part? They don't try to sell you the ticket - they send you off to the airlines website, but all the heavy lifting of searching has been done for you.

The real best part? The "Best Fare Trend" chart.

Hurray!

I want to fly JetBlue

JetBlue is my favorite airline. I just feel better whenever I fly them. The leather seats, the free direct TV and the fact that their name is very similar to JamBase all add up to something positive in my mind.

Unfortunately, they were hit hard this past week by the big snowstorm that went through New York, and with their hub being JFK tons of flights were delayed, canceled and people were left stranded on the plane on the ground for up to eight hours(!)

Their CEO David Neeleman came out and said he was “humiliated and mortified” by what happened and has promised sweeping changes in the way the airline handles delays. He's even gone so far as to develop a Passenger's Bill of Rights and even start paying people for the hours they have to wait wondering when their flight is going to leave.

I've got a lot of thoughts on the whole thing, but the biggest one that comes to mind is...IT'S ABOUT !@@#@!! TIME!!!!

And it's not even about JetBlue, they're just taking the most heat in the press right now. The whole scene needs a shift.

It takes a big mistake to improve the situation, and the airline industry has been suffering from piss-poor service for too many years. Whenever I fly a commercial airline (other than JetBlue, before left week) I always feel like the energy has been sucked out of the room. It used to be a cool, innovative, space age way to travel, but as we know everything changed about 6 years ago.

Maybe the issues this past week will wake some people up to the fact that something needs to be done to improve the quality of service in the air, even if it is the fault of the weather (which, I'm told, they have ways of predicting)

By the way, JetBlue, fly direct from Oakland to Chicago. Please.

I took a train from Chicago to Philadelphia once. Took about 14 hours. That sucked.

Help on the Way

Everyone's a food critic

Remember the "Three's Company" spinoff "Three's a Crowd", where Jack Tripper has his own restaurant "Jack's Place"? In one episode Jack is getting reviewed by a prominent food critic. He prepares all day for the visit, goes the extra mile in the kitchen and tells his staff to make sure everything is just right. The critic comes in, takes two bites of the food and then leaves. Jack thinks he going to get a bad write-up and sends him a nasty letter, but it turns out he gets a favorable review and suddenly Jack's Place is the 'in' spot to eat. Jack then semi-comedic-ly tries to re-call the letter.

In our modern day and age of bloggers, yelpers and diggers, the entire game has changed. What was once reliant upon yellow page ads and newspaper reviews has turned into the ultimate consumer controlled bonanza, flipping the entire industry on it's head. No longer can any company afford to let their guard down or miss the opportunity to treat a customer with the kind of personal attention a traditional media critic might receive, since we've all got bullhorns, and many have a much, much larger readership.

While the whole Web 2.0 revolution has been touted as 'user-generated content', 'turning the consumer into the producer' and 'friends/social networks', I think the true power of the net is in raising the bar on information exchange and giving everyone the best opportunity to find the ultimate deal on a used laptop, tips on house training a puppy or the best place to go hiking in Yosemite. In a nutshell, a true resource for our real-world needs, empowering and created by those who know.

Beyond that, it's a whole lot of flirting...

Simplicity in Second Place

Seth Godin has a snack for conveying the obvious with pithy brilliance.

This time, it's his post about The Frontrunner Paradox

His last point about the risks of those not in the lead is quite apparent. When the spotlight isn't so much on you, there's a freedom to run a little wilder and carve a niche for yourself that the glacier-like corporations can't possibly match.

While I'm sure they're their own glacier in many ways, my recent experience purchasing a Mac has taught me that the market leader, in this case Microsoft (and the entire PC market), is clearly a lot of less innovative than the second place Apple. Is it because they're behind and striving to catch up? Is it because they didn't strike the exclusive, open-platform type of deals which have thrusted Bill Gates to the top of the heap? What is it about this cute little easy to use computer with built in video conferencing and no marketing-ware that makes it better, yet not completely uber-mainstream?

The more I use it, the more I come back to one amazing word: Simplicity

Probably the most interesting aspect I've come across this week is, why do all the sales people at the Apple Store have t-shirts on which say "Go Beyond Vista"? Why are they promoting their competitors? Why do they feel the need to call them out and say 'I'm better'?

It's all very intruiging, and I'll really try not to make every blog post from here on out about my mac...but they're making it damn hard.

morning dew

Free the Tickets

I was at the Concert Industry Consortium (CIC) last week in Los Angeles. It's a yearly gathering of all the Promoters (talent buyers) and Booking Agents (talent sellers) in the live music business. Beyond being a wonderful schmooze-fest, it's a great opportunity to gauge the state of the touring industry and get a lot of personal face time with our clients and friends.

This year's theme seemed to be centered around a few big issues, mainly: Ticket Prices and Secondary Ticket Markets

With the recent announcement of ticket auction site StubHub being sold to eBay and racking in more money than most of the promoters combined last year, there were lots of grumblings over the merits of their operation. While I don't necessarily agree with their practices of 'legal scalping', we do live in a free market economy and clearly most of the folks in charge of ticket sales let this opportunity slip through their fingers. While their eyes were focused on guarantees and service fees, StubHub responded to what fans wanted (mostly in sports, mind you) and created a simple to use system which allowed people to find tickets they wanted to sold out shows. In all honesty, the comments I heard felt a little bit like major labels complaining about Napster. Shouldn't people be excited that folks still want to go out and see music?

Another news item of the week was that OzzFest was going to be completely FREE this year. The rationale was that instead of charging $60-$80 per ticket and only seeing 6,000 people show up, they could give away tickets and get 20k people to come. That means selling more parking fees, popcorn, beer, merchandise and exposure to sponsorship.

The rationale is an interesting one, and probably correct, but the more I thought about it the more I couldn't help worry think about the value we've now placed on a concert ticket. I don't think price is that huge of a hindrance, and by giving tickets away for free, I'm concerned that people might stay home the day of the show since they have nothing to lose (monetarily) by not going. Instead of giving tickets away, how about just lowering the ticket cost a bit to something more reasonable, yet tangible, say: $20 for the day.

The real elephant in the room which I didn't hear anybody talk about are ticket service fees (tax). Two $20 tickets to the Fillmore cost $60 in advance when all is said and done. As a result, people wait to buy tickets, figuring the show won't sell out and they can get them at the door the night of. Then when the night of the show arrives they can easily opt-out of going since they don't have a ticket, it might be raining or they might be tired (or any number of other reasons NOT to go). The promoters get worried because the advanced sales are light so they put more pressure on the band and everybody ends up anxious the night of the show. A big walk-up is a big win, but when there isn't a sell out everybody is looking around asking why.

As an industry, I believe we need to wake up to the real issues we face and be conscious of the opportunities that exist before us. Live Music is an experience. It's one people will pay for buy not unreasonably. It's a simple equation: give the people what they want.

Oh yeah, and the bands have to be good too...

and ... we're back

After a quick trip back to the Apple Store I'm back in business. They spent 5 minutes with the old machine and swapped it out for a new one. My wife thinks I should have negotiated for a free carrying case, but I'm content with a computer that works.

OK, so, now I'm a Mac guy -- quick, someone tell me something cool to do!

Uh oh ... MacBook dramas begin

I've had my new MacBook computer for a little less than 7 hours and already am having issues. The built-in iSight camera is no longer functioning.

I've done very little with it so far, just some simple tasks, took a few photos (yes, it was working) and recorded a song using GarageBand.

Alas, it seemed that Safari was having trouble minimalizing and crashed once ... then when I fired up iChat and saw a friend of mine had video capabilities, I clicked over but got an error that video could not be enabled. From then on I couldn't launch PhotoBooth, getting that error that the iSight couldn't be found or was in use. The iSight doesn't appear in my system profiler utilities and nothing happens after rebooting, taking the battery out for a half-hour or any of the other tricks I've tried by a few simple searches...

Uhhhmmmm....help?

Yeeeah, guess I'll take it back to the store tomorrow to get it fixed. Kind of a let down, although Garage Band was still fun.

Hello MacBook!

After a few weeks of dreaming, searching, researching, bidding, blogging, reading and asking I finally bit the bullet today and went out to the local Mac Store and picked up a new MacBook laptop. 13", 2ghz, 1GB ram, 80gig HD, iLife included :)

While the options on eBay were compelling, in the end it came down to reliability, current-ness, AppleCare and of course the build in iSight camera.

Here goes...wish me luck.

iConcertCal v1.1 Released

The good folks over at iConcertCal have released the latest version of their iTunes plug-in which compares the bands in your music library to various live music event sources (including JamBase) and tells you when the bands are coming to your town.

The new version is more stable, fixes some bugs, allows for better search matching and includes radius searching.

Congrats to Jeff and Brandon on all their hard work these last few weeks and for building something very cool!

iConcertCal.com

Say hi to NOLA

http://www.dogster.com/dogs/477273

12" vs. 15"

So, I've decided I'm going to get the Powerbook G4 so I can be part of the cool-kid mac switch revolution, plus the added bonus of website testing...really just so I can finally record my album using Garage Band.

What I'm debating now is whether to go with the 12" or 15".

I've been enjoying my eBay experience - watching some auctions go through, getting a sense of the marketplace. It's really an incredible tool for a motivated buyer.

Here's what I want: at least 1ghz, 512MB Ram, 60GB HD, iLife.

Which one should I get?
How much should I pay?

Quick, tell me before I buy!

Prince Be Goode

Green is the new black...

My wife the blogger: Green Design

Welcome aboard honey!

Hold Yer Horses!

Go Bearz!!!

Making the Switch

I used to be a Mac guy. Back in the day we had an Apple IIe in our basement and I would play games and make cool line programs that would emulate gravity. It was a whole new world.

In High School I had a Mac Classic and in College had a PowerMac.

Sometime after college I switched to a PC. Likely a business decision or programming need, but over the last 10 years or so I've been working on Windows.

Needless to say, I'm ready to switch. I still have certain needs for the PC at work, but I really want to experience what it's like to use a Mac every day. Maybe it's Steve Jobs' charisma or the fact that he's so damn excited about it, combined with that glowing logo, there's just some appeal worth exploring.

Instead of shelling out $2k for the latest and greatest, my desire has been more focused on getting one of those 12" PowerMac G4 with Garage Band installed so I can record some music and be super mobile.

Anyone have any experience that could assist my purchase? eBay has been helpful so far...I might start bidding soon.

This post feels like a confessional. Thanks.

Alexi Murdoch

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